Wines and Meads, from "both sides of the pond" plus a few bits of other fermented food/drink

Monday, December 31, 2007

Todays efforts!

After a comment at the WinesatHome forums (about honey) I decided to get down to the local branch of Lidl to see what they had.

I came away, not only with some 500g jars of Greek honey but enough apple and pear juice to try a variation of "turbo cider" that I'd read about (or so I thought).

The mead recipe I made up, was one I blogged about before - supplied in hand written form my my mother - who got it from "The Gales Book of Honey".

A straight forward recipe, the only differences being the Greek honey and that I used Lalvin D47 yeast for the first time.

Making the batch up seems to have gone well. I used 4lb/1.75kg of honey to make a "sweet" mead, though I suspect it will turn out very sweet. Like dessert wine. When I did a quick check of the original gravity of the must (just prior to pitching the yeast) it was showing 1.125 or so, whereas the info on the yeast says it has a tolerance up to 14% abv so it'll be about the same strength as "normal" wine, but sweeter.

I then decided to make a gallon of turbo cider. I decided to make it with 3.5 litres of apple juice, one litre of pear juice and a pound of honey - again, I used D47 yeast. It wasn't until I started pouring the pear juice that I realised that it wasn't pear juice, but peach juice - what a prat! I should have read the carton more closely. Ah well.

Anyhow, the mix is fermenting nicely, the only thing being that the pulp from the peach juice floated to the top of the jar and proceeded to foam out right up through the bubbler valve. So I used a baster to suck out some of the pulp and then re-filled the bubbler valve, then gave it a gentle stir by sliding the jar in a circular motion. It incorporated the rest of the pulp just nicely and seems to have settled to a steady ferment.

Excellent. A good days brewing. I'll just have to wait and see how the "turbo cider" turns out!